Zosia Mamet: ‘Shutupnowaygetoverherenow!’

Back in April, as the first series of HBO’s hit dramedy Girls was being broadcast, a Photoshopped version of the show’s publicity poster broke out on the web like HPV on a college campus. The acclaimed series about four hip young women making their way in the world — or, at least, in Brooklyn — had already developed both a following and a backlash. In the remixed poster, its title had been changed to Nepotism, and the four lead actors’ names replaced with those of their parents: Bad Company drummer Simon Kirke (father of Jemima); NBC news anchor Brian Williams (father of Allison); artist Laurie Simmons (mother of Lena Dunham); and the playwright and film-maker David Mamet (father of Zosia).

Zosia hasn’t seen the image, but when I describe it to her, she laughs and reluctantly admits that it’s funny, kind of. ‘But it was a total coincidence that we all have well-known parents. We didn’t all know each other before the show. It wasn’t like we all decided that we had famous parents, “So, hey, let’s do a show together!” ’ Zosia’s sister Clara is an actor, too. Does the surname make it easier or more difficult to succeed? ‘I’ve had people kiss up to me because of my father; I’ve had people be doubly hard on me. It’s a double-edged sword. I think having a famous last name makes you work harder to remove the comma that comes after it.’

Zosia has had two memorable roles in hit TV series in the past few years: first as Joyce, Peggy Olson’s sardonic lesbian pal in Mad Men; then as Shoshanna, the pink-wearing, NYU-attending, Sex and the City-watching Jewish American virgin in Girls. Both characters consort with New York hipsters at coffee houses and warehouse parties; the difference between them is half a century. ‘Cool kids are always cool kids,’ says Zosia, ‘but the Girls generation is super-nostalgic: the clothes, the music, the literature. We’re almost sad we’re not living in the era of Mad Men, because the world was circumstantially more fascinating then. A crazy war, students protesting, the civil rights struggle. I think the kids of my generation would like something more tangible to push against.’

The 24-year-old is also about to begin rehearsals for her first Broadway play, Really Really by Paul Downs Colaizzo, a drama about undergraduate friendships undermined by ugly campus gossip. Our interview takes place in a hotel lobby in Los Angeles, where she grew up and still owns a craftsman bungalow three blocks from the beach, but her work takes her to New York so frequently now that she’s finally moved into a rented apartment in Manhattan. She has a boyfriend, whose identity she declines to divulge; suffice to say, he’s not an actor. ‘But I was always terrible at dating and never did it much. I hid in my room with my books instead. I put my blinders on and focused on work. The whole idea of dating seemed so contrived to me. I met my ex-boyfriend in a diner on New Year’s Eve. He’s the first and only guy ever to ask for my number.’

In person, she has Joyce’s cool, without the character’s caustic edge, and Shoshanna’s sweetness, without the batshit-crazy element. She never wears make-up, she says, apart from a dab of red lipstick if she’s dressing up for an event. At her stylist’s insistence, she bought her first ever hairbrush two months ago. ‘I have quite an eclectic style. I own a lot of old men’s oversized sweaters that I’ll wear as dresses. But I wore a dress by Bibhu Mohapatra to the Emmys. I love a wacky print.’

Zosia first appeared on stage before she was even born, when her mother, the actress Lindsay Crouse, was performing in a Chekhov play while heavily pregnant. Zosia entered the world officially at her family’s house in Vermont in February 1988. Her distinctive name is Russian Polish, like her father’s forebears. Her parents were keen to find a ‘Z’ name, she says, and with advice from an old Polish family friend, they hit upon Zofia, the Russian spelling of Sofia. ‘Zosia is a nickname,’ she explains, ‘like Katie for Katherine.’

Naturally, the Mamet household in LA was steeped in theatre, film and literature. Zosia remains a voracious reader: on her bedside table at the moment is The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton. Her favourite author is Somerset Maugham. Her summer reading was Moby Dick. (‘Took me the entire summer. There’s an 80-page chunk that’s just about whale skeletons. I was like, “Come on!” It was a trek, but I did it.’) She and Clara were forbidden from watching American TV as children, and instead were brought up on old movies by the likes of Powell and Pressburger, Preston Sturges, Frank Capra and Billy Wilder. ‘We also loved British TV shows like Fawlty Towers and Are You Being Served? I got to live a dream about four years ago, because the first pilot I ever did was an American remake of Absolutely Fabulous, and I played Saffy. It didn’t get picked up, but it was so much fun.’

Her earliest memories are all of being backstage in theatres or on film sets, and she can reprise her very first acting role on demand. The Mamets would summer at Cape Ann in Massachusetts, where the tiny local theatre staged a musical every year. ‘I think I was, like, five, and we did The King and I. I played one of the kids, and I had one line: “Snow? What is snow?!” ’

She went to high school in LA, but despised the experience sufficiently to be convinced that she wouldn’t enjoy college. ‘I was horrifically unhappy. I love learning and I was always a very good student because I hated not doing well. But I had some extreme social anxieties. I never really got along with kids my age. I was a bit of a precocious child. I could go with my dad to a party full of famous Hollywood individuals and be fine. But put me in a room with a bunch of other 17-year-olds and I would stand in the corner, terrified.’

Before she could graduate, she was acting professionally: at 17, she joined the cast of her father’s TV drama The Unit for a five-episode run. (Also among the show’s cast members at the time was a little-known Jon Hamm, who told her he wasn’t allowed to cut his hair because he was about to shoot a pilot about ad men in the 1960s, for an obscure channel called AMC.) From there she landed small parts in TV shows United States of Tara and Parenthood, and the movies Greenberg and The Kids Are All Right. At the HBO Emmys party this year, after Girls was nominated for four awards, ‘Someone asked me what overnight success felt like. I said, “It feels about ten years long.” ’

Zosia’s role in Girls wasn’t intended to last beyond the pilot episode, but plans changed and Shoshanna became a recurring character. The show itself, meanwhile, caught a wave of public attention — mostly positive, some not so much — and saw its creator and Zosia’s co-star Lena Dunham hailed as the voice of her disaffected, underemployed, self-obsessed generation. Dunham recently leveraged this status to sign a book deal with Random House for a reported $3.5 million.

‘We are self-obsessed,’ says Zosia, ‘but I think that’s got a lot to do with the way we were brought up: talk about your feelings; everyone gets a trophy. In your twenties you’re selfish, but you kind of have to be, because it’s sink or swim. You’re thrust into the world and expected to figure it out. My generation, we’re super-underprepared for it, because we were so coddled in the earlier years. The brilliant thing about Lena’s writing is that there are no touch-ups. She writes as real as possible, and we’re shown in the most real, often unattractive light.’